Illegal foreign students

Australia may force illegal foreign students back home

Melbourne: The Australian Government has said that its migration fraud investigators have discovered scores of illegal foreign students residing in the country using bogus documents to support permanent residency applications. Over 60 students, whose documents were initially accepted as genuine by the Government, will be forced to leave Australia if they are unable to prove their documents are authentic. According to The Age, the students are suspected of using fake references from employers, which claim to show they have 900 hours' work experience in a job related to their area of study. Foreign students are required to provide evidence of 900 hours' work experience to support their applications for permanent residency. Sources in the international education industry have told The Age some students pay up to 20,000 dollars to rogue college operators or middlemen, such as unscrupulous migration agents or education agents, to obtain fake paperwork. Trades Recognition Australia (TRA) is the body nominated by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship to assess skills, including those of foreign students. Under the Australian migration system, foreign students to support their permanent residency applications can use a successful skills assessment by TRA. In the last financial year, TRA received 34,180 applications for skills assessment, about 10,000 of which were from foreign students. TRA initially accepted the documents of the students in question as genuine. But after the Federal Government received information suggesting their paperwork could be bogus, it sent letters to the students threatening to revoke their successful skills assessments if they did not prove their documents were authentic within 28 days.